


Calm After The Storm / Do You Remember?

by fallofthereichenbach



Category: Atlantis TV
Genre: AU in which everything is happy, Follows canon until it doesn't, M/M, Pure fluff idk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-31
Updated: 2015-12-31
Packaged: 2018-05-10 13:13:58
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5587006
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fallofthereichenbach/pseuds/fallofthereichenbach
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the events of season 2 Atlantis, (in an AU in which everything has calmed down and they've all lived happily ever after) Icarus and Pythagoras go for a walk in the forest and talk</p>
<p>It's kinda like a collection of memories that Icarus has of Pythagoras when they were younger</p>
<p>(Or in which Icarus keeps asking Pythagoras "Do you remember...?")</p>
            </blockquote>





	Calm After The Storm / Do You Remember?

**Author's Note:**

> Idk what this is but I thought it might be cute - before I wrote it, that is

It was a hot day in Atlantis. The sun was baking, the people were tired, and the city itself was dying of heatstroke. In the middle of all of this, Pythagoras was sat at his desk in the house he shared with his best friends. For over a week now they had been recovering and healing the events of the year gone by. It had hurt them and tested them in so many ways, but slowly slowly slowly, they were growing again.

But now Pythagoras was working, on one of his many mathematical theorems. His work felt familiar and yet alien at the same time. He hadn't even looked at it in so long, and so much had happened since then, that everything seemed odd and out of place. He couldn't quite wrap his head around it.

And deep inside him, there was a longing. A longing to be outside, to feel the sun on his skin, to feel the grass beneath his feet, to feel the gentle breeze brush his face... A longing to just feel, to just exist with no purpose but to be alive.

He'd never really felt like that before. Must be getting old.

As if in response to his thoughts, there came a knock at his door that interrupted his thoughts. 

And opening the door, he was greeted with a shock.

"Icarus!"

The man in front of him was so warm and familiar, though everything felt different from the last time they had properly spoken. For one thing, they weren't fleeing from certain death. No tears blurred Pythagoras' eyes, and the smile on Icarus' face wasn't sad.

They embraced as old friends do, and when they broke apart reluctantly, Pythagoras moved to shut the door to the outside world.

"How are you?" Pythagoras asked. A simple question, that held so much within it. "How's Daedalus?"

"I'm alright. He's recovering... How are you? How're Jason and Hercules?"

"I'm alright. Jason's busy sorting everything out with Ariadne, and Hercules... Is probably drunk, somewhere."

Icarus laughed a little, and looked down at his feet.

"So, what are you doing today?"

"I'm trying to work on my maths theorems. They aren't exactly going well."

"Would you maybe like some distraction then?"

Pythagoras stared at Icarus with a look of fond suspicion until Icarus looked back at him.

"What are you suggesting?"

 

-

 

They walked to the edge of the forest in silence, until Icarus gestured for them to stop. The path was dusty and worn with the footsteps of phantom travellers, but the grass on either side of it was growing lush and green. The trees beckoned and whispered of cool shade and a river winding between them.

But they simply sat on the grass at the side of the path, and Icarus began to speak, in that deep voice of his that replaced the silence with something infinitely more beautiful.

"D'you remember... when Father used to make us run errands here, collecting herbs and flowers and plants? And I could never find the right ones, but you always knew exactly where they'd be?"

Pythagoras laughed at the memory.

"You nearly poisoned yourself too many times to count."

"I did. Y'know, before you started coming with me I always got it wrong. Father would always just make me go out again and get more until I got it right, no matter what the time was. But once you started helping... I used to hope that we'd still get it wrong, so that we'd have to go back. Because I used to really enjoy it, you know? It was peaceful out here with you, it was nice."

While Icarus was talking, he moved his hand around the stem of a plant. When he finished talking, he quickly pulled the plant out by its root, and twirled it in his hands, before continuing:

"Now, I've been informed multiple times by my Father that this is a poppy. Hopefully this one won't turn out to be poisonous."

And he handed the perfect red flower right over to Pythagoras, who promptly turned the same colour.

"Th-thank you."

Icarus smiled in response, and then he was standing up, and pulling Pythagoras with him. They had more things to do and more things to do.

 

-

 

The trees gave protection from the hot Greek sun and cast a dappled leafy light over the two travellers. 

Pythagoras and Icarus walked closely through the forest, shoulders brushing occasionally and an unspoken Something between them, sharing invisible smiles and unheard laughter.

"It should be... right about... here!"

"What is it?"

Icarus took Pythagoras' hand, and led him to one tree in particular. They stood in front of it for a second, and then Icarus shuffled them around to the other side.

"Do you see it?"

"See what?"

Icarus pointed to a point on the tree that was roughly at chest level.

"I was considerably shorter when I made it," he confessed. It took a lot of pointing and directing from Icarus, but eventually Pythagoras saw it. Carved into the bark a long time ago in scruffy wobbly handwriting with a rusty knife, were the words 'ICARUS + PYTHAGORAS'.

"Oh Gods, I remember this!" Pythagoras whispered, tracing the letters with his fingers.

"Do you? It was a long time ago, many years ago."

Pythagoras nodded vigorously, and Icarus moved to lean against the tree trunk, and continued.

"We came here one morning - Father had sent us to collect more herbs, but we had an argument about something or other and I didn't want to go. I think I was sick of running around gathering things for him like a servant... Anyway, you convinced me that we should come and gather the herbs, even though I really wanted to spite him. I wanted to do something permanent, something bold, so with the knife that we used to cut the stems of the herbs, I carved our names into the tree that gave the most necessary plants. It took such a long time, do you remember? I kept getting frustrated with it, but I was determined to do it."

"Of course I remember, Icarus, but how did you find it? This was so.. long ago!"

Icarus smiled, and looked a little sheepish.

"Every time when you would go and leave for a little while, to visit your family or anything like that, I used to come here and just sit near the tree. And... whenever the carving looked like it was fading, I would refresh it. Okay, and maybe I still do it. When you were away with Jason and Hercules, and I got so scared that you wouldn't come back, I came here and I prayed to the Gods that you would return safely."

Whilst talking, Icarus drew a knife from his pocket, and reached above his head to the branches of the ancient tree. He quickly cut the end of one of the spindly branches clean off, and turned to Pythagoras. Icarus pressed the soft twig into his hand with a smile.

They both stayed by that tree for a while, thinking of times long since passed.

 

-

 

The waterfall was the place that Icarus didn't have to explain to Pythagoras. This forest was littered with memories from their shared childhood, but none of them stood out like the waterfall. To begin with, it was such a beautiful place; willow trees cried green leaves onto the grass, and the water fell softly from the banks that rose above it to form a small river that wound throughout the forest. It was clean and fresh and lovely.

Many a sunny childhood afternoon had been spent by that waterfall. Occasionally accompanied by other children but generally by themselves, Pythagoras and Icarus wouldn't go a month without visiting the waterfall. Playing in the trees that bordered the lake, learning to swim in the water, eating a small picnic provided by a weary Daedalus on the banks of the shore.

It was the perfect example of childhood wonder, innocence and nostalgia.

"Do you remember I taught you to swim here?" Icarus began.

"I thought I would drown here. I trusted you, but not enough to be sure that I wasn't going to die," smiled Pythagoras.

They stood on the bank and stared at the water and the scenery and the trees and each was lost in his own sea of memory but they were finding each other and reaching out.

Icarus was the first to break the silence.

"Do you remember when you first came to our house?"

"Remember? I wish I could forget. I was terrified. I was eight years old, and my mother had been able to take me to the gates of Atlantis but no further. She gave me the directions to your father's workshop, but they were rushed. It took me a long, long time to reach the house, and it had gotten dark by that point. I was convinced that your father would turn me away."

"But he didn't."

"No, he didn't. He opened the door to me standing shaking on the step, and knew immediately why I was there and what he had to do. I think my mother sent word to him before I arrived about... what had happened."

"Do you remember, he fed you that awful soup-"

"It wasn't the soup that was bad; there was just too much of it! And of course I remember. I ate so much of it that I threw it up right then and there, all over him. But in all fairness to Daedalus, he just wiped it right off and put me into the bed in your room."

"Do you remember when we first came here, to this waterfall?" Icarus asked, quickly switching to another memory. A slow smile spread over Pythagoras' face.

"How could I forget? I was investigating the plants at the edge of the bank, and you said you dared me to jump in. So I of course I had to. But I couldn't swim. The water was only at waist height, and I was panicking, but. I was determined not to show it. So when you offered me a hand to get out of the water, I used it to pull you in."

Icarus threw his head back and laughed. After a few seconds, Pythagoras had no choice but to join in.

"But you know what always particularly stands out about that day? The feeling of the tall watergrass at the edge of the lake - it felt like it was trying to keep me under the surface. Looking back, though, it was a nice feeling."

Icarus knelt, and picked a stem of watergrass, before standing back up and handing it to Pythagoras. He looked deep into his eyes with a visual smile.

"I think that was the day that I realised I loved you," Icarus said proudly with a grin twisting at his mouth, "That day when we were both nine years old and you pulled me into the water because you didn't know how to swim and we thought Daedalus would kill us but he just laughed and dried our clothes... Yeah, that was the day I knew."

Pythagoras looked down at the strange but beautiful bouquet of mementos that he held in his hands. A flower, a twig, a pondweed. Icarus never had been one for traditional.

"I love you, Icarus," Pythagoras said with a fast beating heart. He would never know how long Icarus had spent planning this day, nor how good it felt to hear him say those words. But he saw the way Icarus' face broke into a clear, honest smile that felt as though he was staring into the sun.

"I love you, Pythagoras."

Their lips met in the second kiss of their lives, and this one was soft and slow and sweet - after all, they had all the time needed to get to know each other again.

And when they finally left the waterfall, their hands remained twined together and the smiles remained on their faces for a long, long time.


End file.
